Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

A brand new Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition portrait pack by acclaimed artist, Kieran Yanner is now available on Steam for $1.99 USD.

The Faces of Good and Evil portrait pack includes six brand new character portraits (three male, three female) for you to create charismatic heroes and dastardly rogues and adventure through the Sword Coast.

Beamdog, the studio behind the Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, and more recently Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, apparently has something new on the go. It's not ready to reveal the name just yet (or anything else about the game, for that matter) but it is in the market for beta testers.

It sounds like this will be a proper beta test, rather than merely a couple of weeks of pre-release publicity. Applicants chosen to take part will have to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which will (technically, at least) bar them from talking about the game. Once the requisite paperwork is taken care of, information about the new project and access to the "super-secret forum" will be passed along.

"When testing our game you will be able to give all the feedback you want, file bug reports, and make feature requests," Beamdog said. "It will be invaluable to us and will help to make the final product as good as possible."

And the recruitment message does actually contain a little bit of a hint as to what might be in store: It says Beamdog is looking for "adventurers, warriors, rogues, wizards, druids, clerics, rangers, monks, and shamans" who want to take part. Another journey through the Sword Coast, maybe—or perhaps even points further north? You can sign up to find out before everyone else at the Beamdog forums.

Today we're pleased to bring you v2.3, with fixes for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. Read the full release notes here, a master document that also includes the release notes from v2.0, v2.1, and v2.2!

Highlights of v2.3 include:-Tooltips now display a stylized scroll background that dynamically resizes with the amount of text displayed -The Candlekeep tutors’ dialogue no longer displays placeholder text when a non-English language is selected (BG:EE)-Turkish UI strings no longer appear in English (BG:EE)-Story Mode protections now apply to the player’s Familiar as well as party members-multiple dialogue fixes (eliminating repeated lines, removing incorrect lines, and closing dialogue loops)-multiple gameplay fixes and interface fixes-multiple quest and achievement fixes

We are continuing to make improvements to the game all the time based on feedback from the community and beta testers. Hop over to the official Beamdog forums to join the conversation!

Today we're pleased to bring you v2.1, which includes a number of fixes to BG:EE, BGII:EE, and the Siege of Dragonspear expansion. The full release notes are linked below, but here are the highlights:

- Difficulty options should now be preserved across saved games- Using cloud saves should no longer cause game crashes in multiplayer- Multiplayer in general should be more stable

We still have a few lingering issues to fix regarding multiplayer, as well as other areas of the game that need some more polish; those things will be addressed in one of our upcoming updates. In the meantime, enjoy this first batch of fixes!

Beamdog is pleased to announce the release of the full digital soundtracks for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition and its expansion, Siege of Dragonspear!

The Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition soundtrack features the full original soundtrack from Baldur's Gate, as well as all of the tracks composed by Sam Hulick for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.

The Siege of Dragonspear soundtrack features all-new tracks by Sam Hulick, featured in the Siege of Dragonspear expansion, as well as several bonus tracks from the game's official announcement and launch trailers.

The soundtracks come in both lossless FLAC and 320kbit MP3 format. Once downloaded, you can access them from the Steam Media Player to listen to them while you play--or load them onto your phone or mp3 player and take the sounds of the Realms with you as you venture forth.

About eighteen years or so after marking Baldur’s Gate off my To-Save list, I’m knee-deep in the Infinity Engine once again with Siege of Dragonspear. I’m not going to talk too much about it here, not least because there’s a full review coming soon. But there’s one thing I do want to talk about – not one new to the Enhanced Editions, admittedly, and that’s its Story Mode option. Essentially, at any time you can flip a switch and even a Level 1 mage can suddenly wander into a Beholder’s lair and poke every single one of its eyes out without the slightest danger. You can’t die. At all. In every possible way, you render playing large chunks of the game pointless.

This is our biggest update ever, and it applies to both Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition and Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. The full release notes are linked below. We have a lot of improvements planned in the coming weeks and months as well; stay tuned for more information!

Some highlights:- New Class: The Shaman- New Cleric Kit: The Priest of Tyr- Class Ability Tweak: Poison Weapon now scales with levels- Item Tweak: Stupefier +1 has been adjusted to be more in line with the game's other equipment- Spell Tweak: Enchanted Weapon now modifies the target's existing weapons- Items can now be placed in the Off-Hand slot while ranged and two-handed weapons are equipped- Steam Cloud Save support has been added (Steam only)- Achievements have been added (Steam only)- The User Interface has been overhauled with a new system- Dozens of modder-friendly enhancements- Hundreds of bug fixes

More than a decade after the Baldur’s Gate [official site] saga appeared to come to an end, there’s a brand new expansion available to buy right now. I know how this might look – it’s classic April Idiots’ fodder, telling you about a new chapter in a much-loved series and then revealing that all of your favourite characters have been transformed into unicorns or somesuch.

This is real though. You’ll need the Enhanced Edition of the game to play and we’ll have our own judgement on the expansion next week but, for now, here’s a trailer and some details.